


handle with care

by buckyjerkbarnes



Series: one for the history books [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, and i understand wanda is a strong woman, and that it may have been "a while" since AoU, and that's not going away, another thing about CA:CW i didn't like, but she loved her brother, i feel like we didn't get to see wanda's grief over losing pietro, i think there's a pretty solid balance of both here, post-AoU through post-CW, steve and wanda's friendship shines brighter than the sun, the maximoff's are jewish here, wanda centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckyjerkbarnes/pseuds/buckyjerkbarnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A plan was made: each pawn assigned its role. In the end, Steve sent each of them long, long looks, lingering Wanda noticed, unsurprisingly, on Bucky. He took a shuddery breath and said: “Suit up. We head out in fifteen.”</p><p>Scott said: “Uh, isn’t this where you say Avengers Assemble?”</p><p>Steve didn’t falter, even as something in him caused his whole demeanor to darken. “Not anymore.”</p><p> </p><p>[Or: Wanda finds a home, grieves for her brother, and creates a new family along the way.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	handle with care

**Author's Note:**

> I just love Wanda, okay? I wish she could get her own movie... Ugh. There will be one more fic in this series after this ft. Tony and him dealing with the falling out of the Avengers. Any mistakes in this fic are my own and with that, please sit back and enjoy :)

_Over the Atlantic, 2015_

*

“If you’d like to bury your brother,” Natasha said quietly, folding her hands on the table between them, “we can arrange for a plot to be purchased in a cemetery of your choice.”

She had not thought so far ahead. Her mind was still trying to wrap around the emptiness left behind in Pietro’s absence. They had not been religious, despite having been raised Jewish and having loyally gone to synagogue each Sunday as children: neither of them had much reason for believing in any sort of god after that dark period in their apartment, where their parents perished and they had a staring contest with a cool, cylindrical capsule of death emblazoned with the Stark Industries logo.

(The missile won. It did not bat an eyelash for two days.)

Somehow, she ended up sitting in Steve’s quarters, knees pulled up to her chest. Of all the Avengers, Wanda was very well aware that Steve knew death intimately—he had lost everyone he once knew, had visited more graves than he was comfortable with.

He held her hand in his and let her weep silently.

In the end, Pietro was given a grave with a headstone that had his date of birth and date of death on it in the same stretch of graves that Sarah Rogers was buried. Steve had suggested it, had told her it would make visiting his mother a bit easier, if he knew that she was there, too. If he knew, at some point, he'd have to scrape himself off the ground to take her home.

It was a small funeral, just the Avengers who had briefly met Pietro. There were no extra bells or whistles, no firework show like he might have wanted. She wore red, because Pietro always said that black made her look like she was in a punk rock band. The sky was void of clouds and a perfect, China blue: birds sang, wind whispered through the trees, the sun was bright and Wanda did not know how such a perfect thing could exist anymore.

A rabbi read a few verses from the Torah, he sang a lament of mourning in Yiddish.

Steve gripped her hand through it, too.

 

_

 

_Upstate New York._

_*_

It took about a week and a half of living at the Avengers compound for Wanda to realize that she was extremely lucky.

Lucky as in  _I survived a game of Russian roulette;_ lucky as in  _I never played the lottery and then I did and I ended up winning the jackpot;_ lucky as in there had been a great deal of bullets and none of them pierced her.  Steve Rogers could have abandoned her, ignoring her warning about Tony and what she thought he’d likely do with the body in the Cradle; Clint Barton did not have to give her that pep talk about getting off of her ass, especially after the part she and Pietro had played in Ultron's scheme.

Instead, she'd been given a bedroom that was larger than her family's apartment and was allowed to fill it with things she found aesthetically pleasing—a string of fairy lights, fuzzy blankets, sweet-smelling candles, a guitar. Stark gave her a computer and a phone that her teammates filled with their numbers and various other strings of contact information. Sam started a group chat that always had her device chirping with notifications. Wanda never went without food or heat or the means to bathe. Her clothes were clean: she’d even dyed her hair a lighter, honey-brown just because that was an option now.

Her only sorrow was the constant crush of grief when it hit her Pietro was not around to bask at such luxuries, too.

*

Before the funeral, before the Avengers, before Ultron, before  _everything_ went south, Wanda was once normal.

Heavy emphasis on the past-tense. 

She and Pietro had lived a decent life, even after their parents were killed. Pietro was clever: working his charm to get under the table jobs so they'd have a bit of money, leaving Wanda to search for their next meal, for their next place to take shelter. Sokovia had it fair share of homeless inns, even if they were grimy and tended to be filled with bed bugs. They became intimate with a great deal of them, carefully evading authorities or anyone else who asked for their parent's location. Those five years passed slow and coolly, like a vicious blizzard, leaving them waiting for the blazing, thawing warmth of summer to seep into their bones.

And then Tony Stark became the Iron Man and all hell broke loose.

The name was everywhere. Stark This, Stark That. In the computers, cell phones, television sets, with talks of green energy set to invade the area, too. She had hated Stark and everything his billion dollar empire stood for from the time she was ten: by the time the Avengers surfaced, she was practically foaming at the mouth with loathing. Wanda could not count the exact number of anti-Avenger slash anti-American rallies she had attended, Pietro at her side for every one of them. 

 _How dare these enhanced bastards swoop in and_ save  _the world, leaving the clean-up to those who barely survived_? She'd thought.  _How dare Stark, the Merchant of Death, think he can atone for what he had done by flying around in that ridiculous red and gold armor like some sort of_ God _when he cannot revive the dead who lost their lives at his hand?_

This was not the end of the invasions. People came from various surrounding countries and even places that were not directly touching the edges of Sokovia—Russia, France, England, Spain. Americans, of course, too.Of course. 

They'd been approached by a seedy man who had claimed to have seen them numerous times at the protests. He'd caught them nudging around meager scraps from a garbage bin and bought them a huge lunch, enough food to feed a family of eight. He'd spoken so softly, telling them just how it pained him to see his beloved country stepped on by the boots of foreigners while the natives were made to bow or have their backs broken. Wanda had squinted at him, noting the nervous sweat on his brow, as though the conversation had stakes and if they were not upheld, something terrible would come to pass. She didn't trust him, with his neat, steel-gray hair and his perfectly ironed suit.

He was more of an upper-class businessman just visiting the country than a patriot, a man ready to lay down his life if needed, a warrior prepared to fight.

List had been speaking Pietro's language, though, and when he offered the power to drive these evil forces out of Sokovia, Pietro had jumped on it.

She should have fought harder to dissuade him. Their lives were not bad—they were alive and they had each other, even if they had a great deal of other baggage, too—and that had always been enough. Wanda should have known that nothing good could come from listening to a man with a too-white smile and an inviting, silky voice. But where PIetro went, Wanda followed: that was how they'd stayed alive for so long. 

There had been others, more people who were sick of being treaded on, more that had been approached and bribed in some small way by List to volunteer for the program. 

Pietro immediately made friends with them, glad to have others who shared their mindset. 

She never could shake the feeling that things would go bad at any moment. 

Each and every volunteer was given three meals a day, access to showers, and a bed that was clean, if a little firm. For the first few days, everyone ate and slept and scrubbed off the layers of dirt that had clung to their very pores. 

And then the experiments began. 

One by one, a volunteer was taken. If you had yet to be taken, you did not know where you were to go. Days passed, leaving one more bed vacant, leaving another meal uneaten. Wanda had tried to tell Pietro she didn't feel safe in this place, that they needed to find a way out the moment night fell. 

"Wanda," he had murmured, gently touching her chin. "We're safe here. They're probably just getting packs of information and being sent on diplomatic trips. No harm will come to us." 

(Oh how she'd wished he'd been right.)

When the morning came for Pietro to be taken, she'd spoken up, prompting List if she could come with Pietro or, in the very least, stay outside wherever it was he was being taken to. 

List had found this sweet. He'd allowed it. 

Twenty minutes. 

Their entire lives changed in less than  _twenty goddamn minutes._

Seated in a plain waiting room with Pietro down the hall, she'd  _felt_ her brother's pain when the electric-blue energy from the Scepter breached his skin. Her head snapped up from where she sitting and she elbowed a lab technician in the face to shove her way toward the observation area where a cube rested in a metal container, floating ominously a few inches over the golden length of the Scepter. The light had drawn him in and the moment his hand touched the cube, his body went ram-rod straight. Being exposed to such power had Pietro's skin crackling electric blue, his mouth having fallen open as he screamed and screamed and screamed, currents like tiny lightning bolts ripping down his torso and into his legs, through his arms and to his fingertips, up to his head where his dark hair was shocked white. 

No matter how hard she tried to haul the door open, she couldn't. Even kicking at the key-code lock until it was nothing but a shattered rectangle of wires and broken buttons did nothing. 

Two broad men had appeared on either side of her, growling for her to calm down or they'd be forced to contain her. Wanda was screaming, too, kicking out her legs and jerking harshly to try and break the hold they had on her. Pietro had swayed, turning his head slowly to look at her though the thick glass. He smiled, faintly, before he collapsed in a smoking heap of limbs. 

A needle had been slammed into her neck, a plunger pressed down to inject a powerful drug into her veins. Her muscles all went lax almost immediately. She was dumped on the floor, but hardly felt the blow. 

When she awoke, List had been standing over her, a clipboard resting in the crook of his arm. She was in the glass room, now, and felt her hands start to tremble. "Your brother is fine," he said and though he was a lying, foul man, Wanda could tell he was not being false with her. "You can see him if you'd like."

She waited for the catch. 

"But," List smiled. _There it was_. "You must begin your first trial."

The Scepter had not been moved, nor had the odd little cube that was no larger than an apple. Both were still glowing. The later, though. That was whispering to her, practically crooking its finger for her to come closer. List had offered her a hand, one she only took because she'd been so entranced. She had not heard him slip out the room, likely taking clinical notes or talking excitedly about how experiment of the day was looking to be a success. 

All she had to do was touch it. Just once. Just for an instant. And then she could see Pietro. 

Wanda had slapped her hand over the cube, trying to be quick.

Her body, just as Pietro's had, locked up and kept her from moving away. The energy sweeping into her caused her to shake, vibrating so hard her teeth rattled and she genuinely worried her eyes were going to explode right out of her skull. There was a spark in her head, like a pair of rocks striking together hard and quick, and the stream of blue abruptly became a sharp, bloody scarlet. 

List and his lab techs had not been prepared for the glass windows to explode outward, a rain of glass sharps flying directly into their faces. 

She had passed out again before she could see what her defenses produced. 

*

The first few days on American soil were odd. She was taken to New York and Stark’s legal team was working to try and get her papers so she could become a legal United States citizen—she was not going to return to Sokovia: there was nothing left, at least, nothing left for her.

Clint promised he’d visit soon and she told him to take his ancient backside home to his wife and kids, that she was not four and could survive with a phone call every once in a while.

Steve was never too far away.

(Nor was Vision, but he fell into a different class altogether.)

She was introduced to Sam Wilson on her second day and she liked him almost immediately. Wanda didn’t even have to probe at the very edges of his head to get a read on him to know that he was a good man. When he held out his hand for her to shake, his hold was gentle, but firm. He was completely genuine in his smiles and his jokes.

(“Hey,” was the first thing he murmured to her. “Why did the scarecrow get a Nobel Prize?”

The askance threw her. She cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know.”

“Because he was  _out standing_ in his field!” Steve, from where he was filling up three mugs with this herbal tea Banner had apparently recommended him,  _snorted._  It was a sharp, nasal sound that sent a burst of laughter breaking through Wanda’s teeth.

“That was terrible,” she chuckled, pushing a lock of hair out of her face. “Absolutely the worst.”

Sam beamed. He had a little gap between his teeth, a small, endearing thing. “Made you laugh, though,” he proclaimed proudly.)

Steve took her out to a little coffee shop in Brooklyn about a month and a half in, where he claimed that everyone pretended they were too cool to take pap pictures of Captain America. “We have a much lower chance of being approached,” he surmised, hurrying ahead of her just so he could tug open the door and hold it so she could enter first.

He was such a dork. Wanda told him this, completely straight-faced.

Steve beamed.

No matter how hard she searched in her memory, she could not recall the last time she’d had coffee, at least, coffee that actually tasted like  _coffee._ She sucked up one mug in under two minutes, looking sheepishly to the counter and then to Steve as she noticed he’d only taken a few sips of his, still more than three-quarters of the way full.

“Want another one?”

She bit her lip.

“It’s on Stark’s dime,” he said, conspiratorial.

“Alright,” Wanda agreed, but she did not stand up. “You used to live here, yes? In Brooklyn?”

Steve open and closed his mouth, ducking his head for a moment to buff the flat of his hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah,” Steve murmured. “A very, very long time ago.In another lifetime, really. I don’t know how much you know about history, about  _my_ history, but I wasn’t always like this. I was once smaller than you—thinner, bonier, so much weaker.” He seemed to realize what he said before he glanced up at her, a rosy flush coloring his cheeks a fierce red. “You’re so strong, Wanda. I hope you didn’t think that I—”

“Just use your words,” Wanda told him. “I know what it was you were trying to say.”

He breathed out, going a little redder. With the pink contrast, his eyes looked far bluer. “When I woke up, I didn’t recognize the city I could have mapped out blindly. So much had changed, but,” he nodded at a cab driver laying into the horn and an equally sour-faced man shaking his fist and yelling back, at a tiny old woman caring for a flower stall, giving something pink and full to a girl no older than four, at the people of various ethnicities walking, smiling and moving past one another. “Some things never change.”

She watched him, running the tip of her finger around the rim of her mug. “I felt your loneliness,” Wanda confessed softly. “How you believe that you, yourself, are never seen—that you will always live in the shadow of Captain America.”

Steve’s expression rippled, like her words were stones and he was the water made to shoulder such blows. He glanced up at her, tearing his gaze away from the cooling depths of his coffee to smile. It was a fragile, tragic thing. “You got all that in one trip through my head, huh?” Had they not been in a public place, Wanda might have tackled him in a hug. 

“No,” she murmured. “I got that because I understand what it is to feel helpless and to bury the person you used to be under someone new.” Her finger stilled, she pressed her lips together until the skin around them drained of color. “I was not always like this. My country was attacked by big men with heads inflated by power and I was given a choice: I could stand up, try my best to defend my home and my brother, or I could keep letting those men trample me. You are aware of which path I picked, obviously, how I thought I was fighting for something good, when really, I was just helping my enemy.”

“I know it well,” Steve mumbled. “I know it too well.”

Bright images of dance halls and a mouth painted ruby red and the smell of roses and mustard gas swarmed her senses, sent her temples pulsing dangerously. The essences of the various café patrons were loud and they beckoned to her, whispering for her to come forth, all the while slamming doors in her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered miserably. “I’m sorry for what I made you see.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” Steve said. “You could have shown me much worse things.”

Wanda did not say  _like what_?

He appeared thankful for that.

She reached across the table and covered his hand gently with her own. His skin was very warm, warmer than the normal human being.  

Before he could do something like turn his hand to slip his fingers through hers, she stood and moved around the side of the table so she was planted before him, shoulders squared. Wanda tucked the pieces of hair that had been carefully curled behind her ears away once more. She held out a hand, biting back a grin when Steve stared at her, a touch bemused.

“Hey. I’m Wanda Maximoff. I have powers that are a bit weird, but I’m just trying to do right, I swear.” 

Steve quirked up the corner of his mouth, studying her through his very long lashes; when he took a breath, it was drawn out as though to steady. “Hi. My name is Steve Rogers and I was a glorified science experiment turned propaganda figure. I technically don’t own my own face.”

“It’s good to meet you, Steve.”

The tragic smile returned. “You, too, honey. It’s good to meet you, too.”

She got them another coffee, on Tony’s tab.

*

There was a headline on some gossip rag the next day:  ** _THE GOOD CAPTAIN AND HIS NEW GIRL? WHO IS THIS MYSTERY WOMAN?_**

“Good morning, beloved,” Wanda deadpanned. She slid the paper over the counter to Steve at breakfast, waggling an eyebrow at him.

“And you, my darling.” Sam choked on his bacon and eggs when Steve shot her an over-the-top wink, complete with a crooked grin and the lack of a blush.

(If Pietro was around to see such a title, he’d have laughed himself into next week.)

*

Clint sent her a photo of him holding a blue bundle in his arms.

The blue bundle wore a tiny jumper with a name emblazoned on it in a slightly darker shade of blue: Nathaniel Pietro Barton.

Wanda smiled. The muscles in her cheeks ached.

She entertained a brief phone conversation with the new father: “I’m so happy that his name will live on with someone else. Though, you should know, if Pietro were here, his ego would be rival with that of Stark’s.”

Though she had no idea what his face looked like right then, Wanda had no issue in detecting a fond smile in his voice. “It was Laura’s idea,” Clint confessed. “She still wants to meet you.”

“I’d like to meet her, too. And those little ones of yours.”

“You will.”

(She did.)

*

Natasha knocked lightly on her door, hair tied back in a neat ponytail and her mouth painted a pale pink. In dark, ripped jeans and a yellow t-shirt with a comic-book version of Thor hanging off one shoulder, she barely resembled the legendary Black Widow at all. Wanda thought that might be the point. “Would you be up for some girl time?”

Wanda had never been had a bunch of female friends when she was young: she’d never sat around in a circle and gossiped or braided hair or ate junk food until the wee hours of the morning. Natasha was the closest thing she had to a sister. “What do you have in mind?”

She tugged on her boots, zipping them and plucked a jacket from over the back of her plush chair. Carefully gathering her hair and letting it fall down her back, Wanda followed the redhead away from the residential block, shooting down to the lobby where they found Steve and Sam were waiting.

“Ready to head out, boys?”

“Awh,  _yeah_ ,” Sam grinned, nodding amiably at Wanda in greeting. “The usual?”

Natasha nodded, clearly holding back amusement. The rounds of Steve’s cheeks were flushed pink from trying not to laugh. It was a good look on the both of them. “The usual,” she confirmed.

She fell in beside Steve, who walked with a little hunch to his shoulders and kept his hands in his pockets. Wanda bumped him, shooting him smile. “What’s the usual?” Wanda wondered of him.

“This  _really_  nice spa. There’s this seaweed facial to die for,” Sam claimed, grinning wider when he noticed Natasha’s shoulders jumping with mirth. “And I know it may seem kind of crazy, but hot rocks are also pretty great.” At the lift to her brow and the equally bemused expression Steve was sporting, Sam jabbed a finger at them, shaking his head fondly. “In the words of a very wise pair of people: You’ve got to treat yo’ self.”

Steve perked, opening and holding the car door for Wanda to slip in. “I think I understood that reference.”

“Yeah? We need to have an Avengers movie binge-a-thon—I could watch every season of  _Parks & Recreation _back to back if, yanno, aliens and various sentient beings didn’t try to take over the world every other day.”

Once everyone was seated, safety belts fastened properly, Natasha tore off from the curb, chuckling to herself and at the cloud of smoke she left behind. “Tony hates when I do that,” she told them, conspiratorial. “He hates having to repave each time I do a burnout in front of the main doors.”

“Oh,” Sam snorted. “That’s probably why he cornered me the other day and told me, under no circumstances unless they were world ending ones, to let you drive  _ever_.”

Natasha blinked at him, eyes only straying from the road for a moment. “These are world ending circumstances: we’ve got to get these too very, very stressed out people to a very, very  _non_  stress-inducing environment stat.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Sam said. “Nat: a billion and one. Stark: zip.” 

Steve kicked Sam’s elbow, not too hard—just enough to knock it off the middle compartment. “You’re a pair of saints,” he deadpanned. “The both of you.”

“We’re just doing our civic duty, Steve,” Natasha declared sweetly.

“Did I say saints? I think I meant—”

Wanda broke into a grin, the full sort that flashed her teeth and made her upper lip recede a bit.

The spa was the sort of place that served to remind Wanda of how poor she once was: it was a glitzy facility made of clean glass, white marble, and even had its own garden with a  _waterfall_. Though Stark had hooked her up with a bank account with more money to go around than Wanda really knew what to do with, her wallet ached.

Steve didn’t seem to be faring much better.

“There is so much  _excess_ here,” he said, almost like a child states the sky is blue and the grass is green. “Ah, geez. Only the people rich as Gods had time for this sort of thing before the war and even then the Depression sent everyone scrambling.”

Natasha squinted at she and Steve for a long moment, at their mutual looks of hesitation. “This is why we do girls day.” She hip-checked Steve.“Fossil.”

“Fetus,” he countered, flushing around the tip of his nose and only growing redder when Natasha beamed at him.

*

Sam was absolutely right: Wanda would, indeed, kill a man (a very bad man) for another seaweed facial.

*

“You should come with me next time I get my nails done,” Natasha said, slanting a smile Wanda’s way. She could not see Natasha’s eyes, given they were covered with perfectly circular slices of cucumber, the skin of her face smoothed over with goopy mud. They both wore fluffy white robes, Wanda with her hair tied back in a sloppy bun.  

“Why get your nails done when the moment you enter a fight, the paint will chip off?”

Natasha lifted one of the slices from her eyes, flicking up an eyebrow. “No one ever made a rule that I can’t look nice while punching some asshole in the face.”

Wanda had to admit she made a valid point.

Natasha: a billion and two.

*

They had been at the compound for three months and fifteen days when she heard a rapidly whispered conversation between Sam and Steve-- something about a missing person's case. She hadn't meant to loiter, ears perked to the conversation in the other room, but when she heard Steve's voice  _break,_ Wanda felt her entire body go still. 

She knew about the Winter Soldier. 

About how Hydra had taken him, plucking him up from a snowy, shallow grave in the Alps and shoved strings into every vital part of him, jerking around his body to their liking for the better part of a century. Wanda had heard about him from quiet conversations between the techs and the scientists who'd kept her and Pietro locked in small rooms as to not harm themselves or anyone else, how the  _Asset has escaped containment_ and  _Our empire is collapsing_ and  _We must salvage the scraps before these are torn from us, too._ She was aware that this man was James Barnes, the best friend and fallen comrade of Steve. The blond did not tell her this, though. The information had been pressed into her hands over time: Natasha had insisted they watch various fights from their last major battles (New York and DC only, as they were very much aware what went wrong in Sokovia) and determine what they could have done better as a training exercise. 

The video footage of the Winter Soldier was blurry, as most was captured on cell phones and pulled by SHIELD techies or from news channels. It did not stop her from getting a clear view of his face, once the mask was knocked away. 

She had dedicated herself to these people in both penance for the terrible wrongs she'd helped Ultron do and because Steve had been good enough to look at her and see a  _human being_ , not a monster. With so much Stark technology at her finger-tips, Wanda used the internet to get more up to date with the various issues rocking the American people and stumbled across a huge controversy on Fox News that was paired with images of Steve marching in a LGBT pride parade. There was a great deal of vagueness laced throughout the text, a final, random link to Bucky Barnes' Wikipedia page at the end of the article. She'd clicked it, having heard the name but having no face to match it to, and when she saw that shock of dark brown hair, the sharp jaw, a light bulb bright enough to light all of Manhattan went off over her head. 

It made her respect Steve more. So much more, the fact that he was still standing, even when his other half was in the wind. 

"Steve," she said quietly, planting a hand in the doorway and catching those very blue, red-rimmed eyes with hers. He straightened up, his Captain America mask falling into place. But she could  _see_ him now, see the bloody wounds he was trying to cover up with thin blankets of white cotton, the bones he was trying to shove back together, the pieces of himself that he couldn't make fit. "I wasn't trying to snoop, but I just want you to know that I will do whatever I can to help you in finding Bucky again." 

Steve shot Sam a  _look_. The other man raised his hands in surrender. "Don't pull that face on me, man: I didn't tell her anything." 

Wanda pitched her voice a little lower, taking on a tone that was not patronizing and still resembled something she'd use on a hurting child. "I did a bit of research," she told him simply. "When they showed your face on that bridge in DC... You looked as though you had been shot once the Soldier’s mask fell off. Some puzzles aren’t as hard to piece together as you’d think.”

She closed what distance remained between them, squatting down so she was in front of him. Steve had closed his hands into tight fists, squeezing his fingers so hard that all the blood had retreated, leaving his veins standing on end, his knuckles sharp hills in the low light. Wanda picked his right hand up from his knee, uncurling each digit and smoothing it out; she did the same for his left hand, too.

“I don’t have to look inside your head to know the value he holds in your heart.”

Sam made a soft noise, like a balloon rapidly deflating. He met her eyes, gripping her with his brown ones: Sam had the hints of laughter-lines, small crinkles in his forehead that became most noticeable when he was cocking an unimpressed eyebrow. He had a few silvery hairs, barely there little monsters. She nodded at him. He nodded in return.

“My mother had a recipe for apple tart,” Wanda said, brushing Steve’s limp hair off his forehead. “I haven’t had it in a very long time and wouldn’t be opposed to company while I make it.”

Steve swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah, alright.Only if you let me make  _my_ Ma’s apple pie one day.”

She pinched his chin, a there and gone touch. “Done.”

Once there was cinnamon and warmed apples in his system, Steve became a little looser, talking more freely about the person Bucky Barnes used to be—protector, brother, caregiver, worker, soldier. Steve never said  _saint,_ but it did not need to be said.

The word  _lover_ was never dropped, either. Wanda wondered if it had truly sank in for Steve how the times had changed, how the same sex could marry and have children if they so choose. She wanted to tell him he could trust them with such precious information.

It struck her as Steve passed her his personal tablet, opened to the photo gallery feature where various photographs of Bucky, pre-war, were beaming up at her and those that came during the war were mostly scowls, except for the ones where Steve was right beside him: he was baring his soul for their judgment.

He trusted them plenty.

She may or may not have baked him another apple tart because she couldn’t control her own feelings. Sam looked far too knowing, but didn’t poke fun at her. He did, however, touch her shoulder and stoop to peck her on the cheek when they headed off to bed. “He needed that. Thank you.”

Wanda smiled, her chest tightening as Steve kept thumbing through his digital gallery of precious moments.

*

(The conversation came almost exactly two months later. It was quiet, just like the night:

“You’re in love with him.”

Steve did not have to prompt who embodied  _him_. “He’s everything to me—always has been, always will be.”

“The mind is delicate, Steve. It will take time for him to recover.”

“I just wish I could see him. Just to know he’s alright.”

Wanda curled a hand to Steve’s nape. “We’ll bring him home.”

“I… I really, really hope you’re right.”

So did she.)

*

The day her and Pietro’s birthday rolled around, she did not leave her room. Not for food, for company, for anything. The only thing that saved her was the fact she had a bathroom connected to her quarters. She tugged the curtains closed over her windows, filled a glass she’d left beside her lamp up with water, and crawled back under her mound of blankets.

The knocking started around ten.

“Wanda?” Steve said from the hallway. “You okay?”

She didn’t dignify that with a response. “Friday says that you’re in there and that you’re unharmed, but that doesn’t mean…” He sighed. “I’ll bring you lunch in a bit, yeah?”

Each Avenger who occupied the Compound, minus Rhodey, given he’d been called away to a meeting in Washington the previous night, came to her door brimming with worry, only growing more so when she failed to utter a word.   

It was after one when Natasha took her turn of knocking lightly on her door, gently pushing inside and snapping the door closed in a quick instant. Her hair was down today, falling around her face in smooth, deep red sheets. “Sam had to talk Vision down from walking through your walls to come check on you.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you. Any of you,” Wanda whispered, flinching at how  _harsh_ her accent sounded in the quiet of her room. Wanda pushed her hair out of her face, slowly raising up into a sitting position. “I know you of all people have days where you would like to have solitude to gather your thoughts.”

Natasha’s face softened, growing only softer as she stepped closer and perched on the edge of Wanda’s bed. “What’s so different about today? What makes this day heavier for you to brace?”

“I’m twenty today,” she mumbled, forcing her swollen eyes to remain locked on the crumpled mountain of tissues she’d used already. “Pietro would be twenty, too. Except the dead don’t age—only the living do and today. Today… I don’t feel like I’m anything.”

The red head moved slowly as to give Wanda the semblance of being able to track her movement if she so desired. Natasha curled her arms around Wanda and tugged her against her side, arranging them so Wanda’s face was tucked beneath Natasha’s chin, Nat’s temple pressed to the top of Wanda’s head.

What threw Wanda the most was the fact Natasha did not wear her feelings nearly as open as Sam or Steve did: Wanda had never seen her angry or upset to the point of tears, but this gentleness—she’d seen it on the tough days when Steve got in real late after a dead-end with Bucky, when the poor man just collapsed from failure and Natasha braced for the fall. Steve and Natasha were as close to siblings in arms as she and Pietro had been.

To be shown such tenderness by one bearing irreparable damage to their soul… Camels.Straws. Breaking backs. This was it.

She curled into Natasha and cried like she’d just felt that first stab of loss strike through her head, like she was still guarding that piece of trash in that Sokovian church. Like Pietro had just taken his final breath of air.

Time passed in a goopy veil of aches and sharp pains in her ribs. Her mind was particularly sensitive, searching, probing, reaching for anything vaguely resembling her brother.

(Wanda came up empty-handed. She always did.)

“I think I want to go see him,” she mumbled, pulling a long breath through her teeth. “I need to go see him.”

“Okay,” Natasha said easily. She pulled back, her olive green eyes flicking concernedly over Wanda’s features, using one of Wanda’s wadded up tissues to swipe away what remained of her drying tear trails. “Okay.”

Wanda let go of a thought she’d been holding onto for some time, let it fall from her mouth and settle on Natasha’s shoulders: “You go through this life by paying debts. You’ve gone and saved the world more times than anyone can count, making sacrifices every single time. You owe this world nothing, little dancer. You’ve done more than enough.”

Natasha opened her mouth, blinking once, twice, thrice, before she dipped in and pressed a kiss to the top of Wanda’s head. It was a brief, ghost of a thing.

She swept out just after.

The quiet of the graveyard allowed her to gather herself, as did speaking with a little flower vendor who stood outside the gates. She bought two roses, their faces red and full and sweet. Wanda laid one atop Sarah Roger’s worn headstone, brushing her fingertips over the weathered marble.

“You raised a good boy,” Wanda told the stone. “You should be proud of him.”

Though she did not know Sarah, had no more information on her than her name, Wanda had no doubt that she couldn’t be happier looking down on her stubborn, golden child.

Pietro rested a row and a half over; his stone was a dark, black granite with silver letters. The winter wind hissed coldly through her hair, cutting right through the fabric of her pea coat and causing her hair to snarl around her neck. She licked her lips, trying to keep steady when she felt at any moment, she might shatter.

She rolled the thorn-less stem between her fingers a few times before she lowered it to the earth, tipping so her backside rested atop the frosted grass. “Happy birthday,” Wanda said, buffing the flat of her palm over her dripping nose as her vision became splotchy with salt water. “You idiot.”

Wanda did not return to the Compound until it was so cold, the ends of her fingers were blue and the sun had vanished behind the trees. The drive took a little over forty-five minutes, just under fifty since the traffic wasn’t so bad. She pulled into the garage next to Natasha’s black sport’s car, across from Steve’s bike and Tony’s orange Lambo and a minivan she didn’t recognize.

That should have been her first clue something was up.

She nodded at the security guard who monitored everyone that entered and exited the building, smiling at him weakly when he told her to have a good evening. Taking the back set of stairs and cutting past the training hall, with the open gyms and the shooting ranges, Wanda found herself drawn towards the main kitchen, where there was a sour odor, like something had been burnt and left out to fester.

The instant she rounded the corner, a cacophony of voices yelled: “SURPRISE!”

Wanda stared.

The room had been decorated with strands of delicate lights, giving the area a warm, golden glow. A mountain of gifts, ranging from professionally wrapped to _I tried,_ were settled on a table that must have been moved in just for the occasion. Standing around the kitchen island, though, were Steve, Natasha, Sam, Vision, Rhodey, Tony, Clint, Laura, and their kids.

“You did all this for…?” she managed to start.

Natasha stepped up, a teeny smile threatening to dominate her collected edge. “We wanted to make today good for you—we would have done more if any of us had thought to look in your file and mark your birthday down. You’re part of the team, Wanda. Let us indulge a little when it comes to parties.”

“Done more,” Wanda echoed.

Steve nodded. “Yeah,” he murmured, like he understood exactly what was going through her head. “Done more.”

“God bless express shipping,” Sam said, swiping an imaginary tear away. Baby Nathaniel was being bounced on Laura’s hip, grinning at Wanda widely and something shook lose in her chest at seeing such a pure moment of joy. “Without it, we’d have never pulled it off.”

Tony clapped his hands together, throwing them open to his left with a proud beam: “Vision baked the cake.”

“I did, indeed, bake this cake,” Vision confirmed. He smiled, timidly, practically shuffling from foot to foot. “I, erm, hope it’s alright.”

(It was, quite possibly, the greatest thing she’d ever tasted.)

*

When she had stepped onto the very green earth of the Avengers Compound, Wanda never expected to find any semblance of family ever again. She did not expect to find a gentle companion in Steve, a mentor in Natasha. Wanda was not prepared for the kindness from Sam, the various anecdotes from Rhodey. She never counted on Vision being so tender, so sweet in that quirky, proper way of his. Even Stark became something of a generous uncle, turning up for movie nights, Clint dropping by a time or two just to spice up the retired life a bit.

Wanda, without Pietro at her side, had never, ever, fathomed being happy again.

This was a strong start.

 

-

 

_2016._

When they landed in Laos, things unraveled quickly.

No matter how hard she tried, Wanda could not grasp the strings that kept the world secure. They slipped through her hands, cut open her palms. Left her bleeding and raw.

This was bad, yes.

The Accords only made things worse.

*

She understood that Vision meant well, trying to keep her under lock and key for her own protection.

She only hoped that, as a fellow child of war, he understood Wanda could not sit down when the drums of battle began to sound. 

 

-

 

_Berlin, Germany._

“I’m so sorry, Wanda,” Steve said quietly, pulling out of their tight hug to cup the side of her face in his hand. “I didn’t want to drag you into this, but we needed all hands on deck.”

She shook her head. “There’s no need to apologize. I'll stand with you, always. You should be aware of that by this point. Because if…If...," she swallowed, pitching her voice low so only he could hear her. "If Pietro were to be miraculously alive, I'd rip apart anyone who tried to take him from me." 

Steve's entire face softened, cracking around the edges. She wanted to reach out further, have a go at trying to hold him together. "I don't want to hurt anyone and I especially don't want  _you_ hurting anyone for me." 

She quirked up the corner of her mouth. "This may not be a conventional war, but it's not a school yard fist fight, either. People are going to be hurt, even if we don't want them to." 

"Clint told me about the confrontation before you both left the compound..." 

Wanda squeezed his wrist before she let it fall away. "Vis and I will be fine," and she knew they would be. Their connection was stronger, their ability to communicate much better than that of Stark and Steve. They did not easily anger: all she’d have to do was _look_ at him, and Vision would be aware of just how sorry she was for using such force on him. He probably already had an idea.

God she hoped he had an idea.

She smiled at Scott, who’d not stopped beaming at Steve and she shared a brief instance of eye contact with Bucky goddamn Barnes. He nodded at her and she felt her features, so taunt with tension from the long car ride—she and Clint had to hi-jack one of the Avenger’s quinjet’s, kidnap Scott, get across the Atlantic undetected, and steal a van once they were grounded so to say the day had been long was an understatement—soften.

Her hip bumped Steve’s, just a tiny nudge. “He looks good,” Wanda said, angling her face so the center of conversation couldn’t read her lips.

“Yeah,” Steve grinned, huge and dopy and so punch-drunk it made her teeth hurt. He didn’t look a thing like a man about to march off to battle; he resembled a sinner who’d found God and who had been accepted with full, open hands.

“I think I’m going to introduce myself,” she said. “Since we’ll probably be seeing a lot of each other.”

Steve nodded, a series of elated head bops. “Yeah,” he breathed, raising his fist to cough into it. A piece of Captain America snapped back into place. “You do that then I’ll brief you.”

She didn’t feel so bad leaving him alone, as Sam appeared at from behind the van in full Falcon gear, goggles pushed into his hairline. They immediately engaged in conversation.

Compared to the plethora of photos she’d seen of him, Bucky had aged. Not a great deal, not enough that the untrained eye could pick it up, but the changes were there: slight lines in skin that was once unmarred, a sallowness to his stubble-clad cheeks that suggested lack of sleep and a touch of hunger. It stung to hold his eyes, though, to see the phantoms that lingered in him, to see him clinging to just a few rays of light in an otherwise dark place. She met his gaze anyway.

He straightened up when it occurred to him that Wanda was heading over to him.

"Hi," she said, quirking up the corner of her mouth with an open smile, catching Bucky’s eye from over the roof of the Beetle. "I'm Wanda." 

"Bucky," he nodded, shooting her a little, tight-lipped smile. "I'm—"

She raised her hand, the line of her mouth softening when he huffed quietly and pressed his lips together. "If you're going to say 'I'm sorry for dragging you out of a safe haven' you do not have to waste your breath—Steve just gave me the same spiel. I'm here because it is the right thing to do." Wanda tipped her head so she could glance over her shoulder, catching Steve looking at Bucky, eyes never leaving the side of his face even as Sam spoke on.

One did not look at a brother in such a way. He was so transparent, laid open like a nerve, beating and waiting for a vicious blow to strike him.

“He brings out the best in people,” Bucky mumbled, tucking a lock of his dark hair behind his ear, more a nervous habit than a necessity. 

Wanda’s smile slipped, jerked so harshly it almost fell completely. The manner in which he’d uttered such words implied that Bucky believed there was nothing good left in him; that he was not _people_.

This solidified her decision as to what it was she uttered next: "It does not hold a candle to what was done to you," Wanda said, reaching across the dark blue metal to cover Bucky's metal hand with her own. "But my brother and I were held by a Hydra cell for over four years. We were unmade and warped to be something that could hurt and damage and cause mass-destruction. I am here because I've seen Steve hurt over your hurts and I want to get you both the justice and closure you deserve." She squeezed his hand. “Because you do deserve it, Bucky.” 

Bucky was staring at their folded hands, a deep furrow wedged between his brows. "You're so young," he said, as though if the prospect was unfathomable. "You... You didn't..." 

"You were young, too," she countered gently. "Not even thirty. You didn't ask to be their gun. They took that choice from you. Do not forget that." 

He let out a quiet, strained laugh. Like Steve, his eyes were very blue, very sad, and very old. Her heart ached for them. "That's the one thing I don't think I can forget." 

And this? This just sealed the niggling thought that had been whirling around in her head since Steve revealed Bucky was an amnesiac. "I'm not sure if Steve has told you, but part of my powers include reaching into people's minds. If... If you'd like, I can try to find any plants that Hydra left behind. It would be the least I could do." 

"Wanda," Bucky said softly, looking terribly bemused. There was no repulsion in his features, like he was frightened of her— and that in itself was a huge relief—nor was there any signs of him readying an argument to deny the assistance she was extending his way. He wore the expression of a child, split open in wonder. "Why are you giving me so much when I've done nothing but disturb the life you've made for yourself?" 

"I was being babysat in Avengers Compound for the stunt pulled in Lagos when all I wanted to do was protect innocent people. If I had stood by and let Rumlow blow up Captain America, I'd have been called a stupid fool who did not act quickly enough, who allowed a national icon to die alongside dozens of others in the crowd and for my choice to save Steve, I inadvertently killed civilians in a surrounding apartment building.” She had come to terms with her mistake, horrified though she still was over it. “I’ve been with him for over a year now and I know what your safety means to him: I’d have come, no matter what.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that and, smartly, decided not to say anything at all. Wanda squeezed his metal knuckles, unsure of whether or not he felt the pressure, but she caught the tiny quirk of his lips that he aimed at her, shooting a beam of her own in return.

“Alright,” Steve called, raising his voice to capture their attention. She turned, Bucky trailing around the side of the Beetle to stand next to her. “Let’s go over what needs to be accomplished in the hours ahead.”

A plan was made: each pawn assigned its role. In the end, Steve sent each of them long, long looks, lingering, unsurprisingly, on Bucky. He took a shuddery breath and said: “Suit up. We head out in fifteen.”

Scott said: “Uh, isn’t this where you say _Avengers Assemble_?”

Steve didn’t falter, even as something in him caused his whole demeanor to darken. “Not anymore.”

*

During the fight, Vision did not try and attack her.

She was thankful for that. Wanda didn’t know if she would have had the heart to attack him in return.

When CIA agents swarmed the area with their guns and their buzzing tasers, Wanda held out her wrists by means of surrender. They did not try and place her in handcuffs, though.

A needle was jammed into the side of her neck, a knife cutting through melted butter.

Wanda’s mind shut down before she could register hitting the ground.

 

-

 

_The Raft, Somewhere in the Atlantic._

_*_

“Wanda,” Clint said, low and urgent. “Kid, are you okay?”

She stirred, only vaguely recalling a rush of hot chemicals sprinting through her blood-stream. It was not Hydra’s drugs this time, but that did not make her feel any better. Her arms were folded across her chest, restrained by thick, black material and pinned in place by industrial-grade straps.

“I’m fine,” she grit out.

“You don’t sound fine,” Sam chimed, voice rough with disuse.

The guards had dumped her on her side, stripping her off her red and black uniform and placing her in a plain jumpsuit, shoes like bedroom slippers hanging onto the edges of her feet. It took nearly a minute to maneuver herself into an upright position, another two to try and stand. Her balance was still off from the drugs. When she swayed into the solid, concrete wall, her shoulder took the brunt of the blow.

She could only just see her reflection in the glass and her mouth thinned. If she grew any paler, she would start to doubt the existence of her blood. “They’ve fitted me with a straight-jacket,” Wanda said, completely lacking any sort of emotion. “And a shock collar like some sort of dog.”

“Jesus fuck,” Scott breathed.

“I know damn well the Geneva Convention has  _words_ to say about that kind of thing,” Sam burst, absolutely seething. “There are lines that are drawn and can’t be crossed.”

Wanda swallowed, running her tongue over her teeth to try and collect enough saliva to dampen the dry corners of her mouth. “You all may have rights, but I don’t—I’m an enhanced.”

Expressing her sentiments pretty accurately, Scott repeated: “Jesus  _fuck_.”

“Has there been any word on Steve and Bucky?” she finally prompted.

Clint was the one to answer her this time: “No,” and she detected only the faintest traces of a smile in his voice. “What’s the thing they always say, though? No news is good news?”

“You think they made it?” Scott wondered, a note of concern making his voice go a bit. “I mean, it’s Captain America and Bucky friggen Barnes and together they can, like, do anything. I just hope it wasn’t all for nothing.”

“It wasn’t,” Sam declared. Though she could not see any of them, even if she walked up to the glass and pressed her face against it, flicking her gaze to the left and to the right, Wanda had no problem imagining his face, right then. His mouth would be pursed, brow raised, hands clenched into defensive fists: Samuel T. Wilson, loyal to the end. “If that threat is still out there, those two are the only ones who can bring it down.”

 _That threat._ The other Winter Soldiers.

“They’ll be fine,” Wanda said, shooting for calm and landing on vaguely desperate. “They would never let anything happen to the oth—  _ah!_ ” Wanda broke off on a scream at the abrupt stream of white-hot electricity through her bones, her entire being shaking even after the current ceased.

“Wanda!” Clint, Sam and Scott all yelped as one. Fists slammed against glass, grunts ripped from throats as the impact struck a chord of pain within them.

“No talking!” a guard barked, sending another bolt of lightning down her spine. “Or she becomes a roasted little witch!”

Silence descended over them, like nooses ready to fit around their necks.

*

When Stark came striding in, his eyes lingered on her for a moment. She thought she saw remorse in his face.

He moved past too quickly for her to tell.

*

The food slot was three inches in width and about ten in length. It was large enough for a metal tray to be slipped in. The supposed meal resembled ground-up newspaper pulp, smelling like one of the grimy alleyways she and Pietro would have taken refuge in if all the shelters filled up before they could claim a space.

There was something in the room that kept her powers from working, that kept her being able to levitate mouth-sized bites to her lips. If she wanted to keep up her strength, Wanda had to get on her knees and flop flat on the ground, wriggling so her face was over the tray: her tongue was her spoon, leaving her to lap up the slop like a starved animal.

No one bothered to undo the straightjacket.

*

She curled up in the corner of her room, temple resting against the cool surface of the wall.

Her bed went untouched.

Wanda never stopped shaking.

*

“Oh my God,” someone whispered. “ _Oh my God._ ”

She didn’t move, even as the glass doors slid open and a gentle pair of hands landed on her shoulders, turning her away from the wall. Steve was gaping at her, the color draining from his face, leaving him hollow and white, the blue of his eyes a sharp contrast. His fingers came up to the sensor at the base of her skull and crushed it, tossing away the collar as his other hand ripped open the straps.

The moment she was free, Wanda’s arms flopped limply to her thighs, the blood attempting to rush back into its proper space. “Steve,” she mumbled. Wanda couldn’t look at him. He was too bright.

He pulled her into his arms, curling one of his broad palms to the back of her limp hair. “I’m here,” Steve assured her, touching lightly at her neck, eyes searching for any signs of outward injury. “Come on, honey, let's get out of here." 

She was scooped up as if she was a child, cradled in Steve's arms as he launched them in the direction of freedom. Her eyes slipped closed. She embraced the quiet. 

Wanda ended up stirring a couple of hours later, an IV inserted into the crook of her arm with a bag of fluids pumping into her body. With heavy eyelids, braced as if there was an anchor clinging to each one of her lashes, Wanda forced her eyes open and stilled. 

Vision was sitting in the chair to her left, his hand lightly curled around her own. He jerked when he noticed her eyes were open, the tiny golden gears that made up his irises spinning a bit quicker. 

"Wanda... I'm so—"

The corner of her mouth rose, curling upward a few degrees. Everything felt heavy— her eyes, her nose, her chin, her tongue, her face, her limbs. It didn't stop her from gaining control of her vocal chords, dry and unused as they were. "Come here," she whispered. 

He tugged his chair forward noiselessly to the point he had to turn so his knees weren't uncomfortably flushed against the medical bed. "I didn't know how horrible you would be treated," Vision said in that sincere voice of his. "I never meant for my decision with the Accords to come to such atrocities." 

"I know," Wanda murmured. 

"I..."

She raised the hand nearest to him and cupped his face, smiling when he raised a hand of his own to hold her greatly weighted limb steady. "Whatever it is you did not say, I  _know_ , Vis. I've always known. You wear your heart so openly, how could I not?"   

"Still," Vision sighed. "It... It pains me to see you in such a state. To know that I allowed you to rot away..."

Wanda shook her head. "I knew the stakes. I knew that being imprisoned was something that could happen and to know that I helped an innocent man to freedom? That’s a lot. Knowing you’re alright, well, that’s everything else.” She patted her stomach, smiling sleepily when Vision dipped forward and curled an arm around her middle, his face pressed against her ribs. Her hand curled to the side of his skull, rubbing a thumb over the skin near where his ears would be, rolling her digit in tender, tender circles.

They did not speak. 

(When she came around again, having entirely no idea how much time had lapsed since she last was lucid, Clint was her only company. He was golden. A bow was balanced on his knee, a quiver against his calf. Wanda wondered if Vis had been some sort of glorious fever-dream, but did not ask.

"You look like Apollo," Wanda slurred.

Clint winked.)

 

-

 

_Wakanda._

_*_

Their safe haven was gorgeous, practically glowing with growth and green things that she had never before imagined could exist. Her eyes would not stop moving, following the paths of vibrant, multi-hued birds with wingspans large enough to rival some sort of prehistoric creature of flight; at twisting plants and the clear, deep blue sky, at the facility made of glass nestled into a rocky mountainside, constantly guarded by a panther made of onyx stone. She had never felt more protected.

Scott held her elbow as they got off the quinjet, a hand spread at the small of her back. “You’re kick ass,” he told her, lowly, still managing to sound greatly concerned, “so please don’t kick  _my_ ass for trying to support you.”

Just so he’d stop fumbling, Wanda pecked him on the cheek, absolutely startled by the laugh that rolled off her tongue. “I’m not steady,” she said. “I won’t kick your ass.”

“You won’t kick my ass today, you mean.”

“You’re so  _extra_ , Tic-Tac,” Sam sighed from ahead of them, turning from his post in Steve’s shadow to share an eye roll with her. “A good guy, yeah, but so much  _extra._ ”

“Your flirting needs work, Falcon.”

“Fuck you, Lang.”

“See? That’s better. Real direct approach. _Nice_.”

Clint piped from the rear, his steps light: “And to think you were speaking so well through ASL these last weeks. Now I see you both need marriage counseling...”   

*

(When they reached their quarters, each given their own rooms, Sam asked quietly what happened to Bucky.

Steve’s face was smooth and void of any sort of emotion. “Tony blasted his arm off. The metal one—,” he corrected in a rush when the temperature of the alcove dropped dismally. “—and Bucky went back into cyro-sleep. He… he felt like he was a danger to himself and everyone around him.”

No one said anything about the tears that dripped from the corners of Steve’s eyes.

No one uttered a word when he didn’t seem to notice them, either.)

*

She allowed herself a day and a half to sleep and regain what strength she was made to lose before approaching Steve. Sam had told her to look in one of the smaller medical wings: it wasn’t that hard to locate him, especially when his thoughts were so  _loud_.

He sat on a stool in front of a sleek tube etched with frost. Inside, Bucky looked as pale as death, still as a corpse save for the occasional lift-drop-lift of his chest. The expression he wore slammed into her solar plexus as though she’d taken a hit from Thor’s hammer, instead: he stared at the tube like one might a holy idol, like one may stare at the night sky, otherwise lost in the middle of a barren landscape with nothing to suggest the journey would end happily.

“I made him a promise,” Wanda murmured, padding in and standing at his left. “Before the fight. I told him I’d use my powers to get rid of anything HYDRA left behind.”

Steve’s head snapped her way so quick she worried, even with the serum, he was might’ve been at risk of breaking his neck. “You… You would do that?”

She covered the round of his shoulder with her hand. “Of course I would.” Wanda quirked a finger at another stool on wheels, ushering it forward so she could join him in his vigil. “You gave me a home and showed me friendship, never hesitating to extend your kindness my way. You trained me to be stronger than I was, Steve. The very least that I can do—the  _very least_ —is help bring your home back to you, in return.”

He practically tackled her, his large arms enveloping her significantly smaller frame. Steve shook in a different way than she had shook on the Raft: the grief he’d held inside of himself for so long finally began to splinter apart, leaving him hollow and a bit beaten up. “Thank you,” Steve choked into her neck, pressing a series of firm kisses to her cheeks. “Wanda,  _thank you_.”

Wanda held him, carding her fingers through his hair, stiff with oil and neglect. “Don’t thank me yet,” she said, drawing in a deep breath as she nudged him away. “Thank me after you’ve got a decent meal and a shower. And make it quick— we’ve got work to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Note—I know there is never any clarification on if Wanda & Pietro are in anyway religious, but given that Magneto was their father in the comics, I thought it would be a respectable nod at their background that was, yanno, viciously wiped by Marvel… Ahem. I’m sorry, I’m not bitter :-) 
> 
> ALSO: So originally, I had Bucky being cured by the BARF tech, but then I realized, as many other brilliant, much brighter authors did, that Wanda knew of Bucky's situation and, given her huge, kind heart, would be more than willing to help in Bucky's recovery. I've made the appropriate changes to "causing accidents" with the BARF technology serving as a back-up plan, still purchased by T'Challa since, yanno, this guy is precious and has a gift-giving streak wider than Tony.
> 
> ANYWAY~~~
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Please comment what you think and don't forget to kudo! It means a great deal to me <3 I've got one more story in this series so stay tuned!


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